A Record of Achievement:
Unusual Contributions and Distinctions
in Research and Publication
by Students of English
at Auburn University at Montgomery
We're proud of our students! Here are some reasons why:
Students of English at AUM have won
MAJOR NATIONAL FELLOWSHIPS
External national fellowships are usually highly competitive and testify to the quality of a student or a student's program because they indicate that objective, off-campus evaluators are willing to endorse a student's work by awarding a substantial sum of money.
* In 1995, Lynn Bryan was awarded a special six-week summer fellowship to study Latin language and culture by the American Classical League.
* In 1995, Kurt Niland successfully competed with more than 800 other students from across the nation to win a Younger Scholars Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Niland was the only undergraduate winner from a college in Alabama. His NEH grant allowed him to do a month's work at Yale University's Beinecke Library.
* In 1997 and 1998, the department was awarded a special grant of $54,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York, one of the largest and most prestigious foundations in the nation dedicated to supporting the humanities. These funds were designed to allow AUM to host a two-year seminar for graduate and advanced undergraduate students as part of Mellon's effort to promote study of connections between theory and practice in the humanities. Students from throughout Alabama received full tuition payments plus travel stipends ranging from $250 to $750. In all, over thirty students will have benefited from this two-year program. Only a few other colleges or universities were selected as sites for Mellon seminars this year. They included such schools as Brown, California State, Northwestern, Tulane, and William and Mary. Participants from AUM in 1997 included Patricia Angley, John Burdett, Kathleen B. Durrer, Ashley Gordon, Jacques Grant, Scott Johnson, Katie Magaw, Michael Probst, Claire Skowronski, Ondra Thomas-Krouse, Claudia Wilsch, and Jonathan Wright
* In the past decade, AUM faculty members in the department of English and Philosophy have won awards, fellowships, or prizes from such organizations as the Alabama Arts Council, the Alabama College English Teachers Association, the Alabama Humanities Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Bibliographical Society of America, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, the Center for Mark Twain Studies, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (UCLA), the College English Association, the Committee for Excellence and Innovation in the Use of Technology in Teaching, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Jervis Langdon, Jr. Fellowship Committee, the Katherine Ross Richards Centennial Teaching Fellowship Committee, the Lantern Award of Excellence Committee of the Southern Public Relations Federation, the Mark Twain Circle of America, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Newberry Library. Such recognition has not only provided objective testimony of the value of our department's work but has also made it easier for us to interest editors and publishers in the work of our students.
Students of English at AUM have been published in
RESPECTED SCHOLARLY JOURNALS
Even senior scholars know how difficult it can olden be to "place" an article in a peer-reviewed national or international journal. Rates of acceptance to rejection usually number at least one in ten, which is one reason that publication is taken so seriously in considering candidates for tenure and promotion. Work submitted to such journals is evaluated by outside readers (usually at least two) who have no knowledge of the author. For a graduate student to be published in such journals is very rare; for an undergraduate to be published in them is almost unheard of. These publications are routinely indexed in the standard scholarly reference works and are read and cited by scholars from throughout the world. Students who publish in them make a permanent contribution to knowledge and essentially become teachers themselves. For all these reasons, we are particularly proud that the work of our students has appeared in such periodicals as
* Notes and Queries Published continuously at Oxford University since 1849, N&Q is the standard international forum for short, research-oriented articles about English literature. In recent years, several AUM students have either written or co-written articles accepted for publication in N&Q These students include Lynn Bryan, Kurt Niland, and Neil Probst.
* The Explicator For more than fifty years, The Explicator has been the standard place for scholars to publish short critical articles about English and American literature. In 1997, an article co- written by an AUM faculty member and an undergraduate student, Paul Duke, was published there.
* The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America One of the top two or three journals in its field, PBSA deals with highly technical matters of scholarly editing. We are thus proud that one of our undergraduate students, Kurt Niland, had an article (co-written with an AUM faculty member) published therein 1996.
* The Flannery O'Connor Bulletin The Bulletin, which has existed for more than twenty years, is a prime outlet for scholarship focused on this famous writer from the American South. In 1995 an AUM undergraduate, Kurt Niland, published an article there co-written with an AUM faculty member.
* CLAJ Journal Another article on Flannery O'Connor, co-written by an AUM faculty member and an undergraduate student, Michael W. Crocker, was published in 1994 in the College Language Association Journal, a well established journal available in many libraries and.distributed to all members of the Association. Recently the article was selected for reprinting in Contemporary Literary Criticism, a standard series of reference books.
* Comitatus Published by the English Department at UCLA, this is one of the few national scholarly journals devoted exclusively to work by graduate students. In 1996, the journal published an article on Ben Jonson (Shakespeare's great contemporary) written by AUM graduate Karen Pirnie, whose work was based on the graduate thesis she wrote at AUM. Pirnie recently received her Ph.D. from the University of Alabama.
* RE: Liberal Arts Another article on Ben Jonson, co-written by an AUM faculty member and by undergraduate student Kurt Niland, was published in 1996 in the journal RE: Liberal Arts, which has existed for more nearly thirty years.
* The Ben Jonson Journal: Studies in the Age of Elizabeth, James, and Charles BJJ has thus far accepted work by a series of AUM students, partly because each such article has been so well received by readers and reviewers. For example, an article co-written by Lynn Bryan and an AUM faculty member was singled out as one of the two best published in the journal's 1995 inaugural issue when that issue was reviewed in a standard year-end round-up of Renaissance studies. The comments of the reviewer, James Shapiro (professor of English at Columbia University), helped make it possible to place in the journal's next issue (1996) an article prepared by AUM undergraduate Neil Probst. In turn, Probst's article was greeted so enthusiastically by readers and members of the editorial board that two more AUM students, John Burdett and Jon Wright, were invited prepare a survey of Jonson scholarship due for publication in the 1997 issue. And, finally, the excellence of the work done by Burdett and Wright led the editors to invite still another AUM student, undergraduate Katie Magaw, to prepare another bibliographical survey which will appear in the 1998 issue.
* The Wall Street Journal and The Freeman In 1996 the Wall Street Journal published an article originally written for an English class at AUM by graduate student Michael Probst. A more fully developed version of the same piece won a cash award and was then published in 1997 in The Freeman, a venerable journal of economic thought.
* The Faulkner Journal In 1998 the Faulkner Journal (devoted to the writings of the great Southern author) will publish an article written by Joe Csicsila, a former graduate student at AUM who originally wrote his paper for one of his English classes. Csicsila's writings, many of them the products of classes at AUM, have also been accepted for publication in such forums as American Literary Realism, Studies in American Humor, The David Mamet Review, the Encyclopedia of American Literature, and the Garland Encyclopedia of American Nineteenth-Century Poetry.
* Atlanta History and Alabama History Articles by Steve Goodson, who was five credits shy of a double major in English and History at AUM, have been published in the journals Atlanta History and Alabama History. Now a history professor in Georgia, Steve was offered a full graduate fellowship at Harvard University but chose instead (because of his interest in Southern history) to accept an even more generous Woodruff Fellowship at Emory University, where he won many prizes for scholarly excellence. He is currently finishing a book on Atlanta history.
* The Rectangle Two AUM students have had articles published in The Rectangle, the official journal of Sigma Tau Delta (the international English Honor Society). David Brown published an article on Mellville's Billy Budd in 1986, while Kurt Niland published an essay on Sylvia Plath in 1995.
Students of English at AUM have been published in
SIGNIFICANT SCHOLARLY BOOKS
Over the past several years, students in our department have had opportunities to publish work in books dealing with important topics, indexed in major bibliographies, and available in libraries throughout the world. These books already have earned many strong reviews, and this vigorous publishing program is currently growing only stronger.
* Essays by two students, Neil Probst and Karen Pirnie, were published in a 1995 volume entitled "The Muses Females Are": Martha Moulsworth and Other Women Writers of the English Renaissance. This lengthy work, edited by two AUM faculty members, featured contributions from some of the most prominent scholars in English Renaissance studies. It has already received a very strong review from Professor Anthony Low, chairman of the English Department at New York University, in the annual survey of scholarship published in Studies in English Literature. Royalties from this book are donated to the AUM Library and to the English Scholarship Fund.
* Work by a number of AUM students is included in a recent book entitled Short Fiction: A Critical Companion. This book, which provides detailed commentary on approximately forty of the most famous British and American short stories, was edited by three AUM faculty members. Over 400 pages long, it provides a thorough introduction to modern literary theories and promises to become a standard work of literary reference which is likely to be purchased by academic, public, and school libraries throughout the world. Negotiations for a paperback edition of the book are currently under way. Among the students included are Lara Bridger, John Burdett, Mike Cunliffe, Foster Dickson, Kathleen B. Durrer, Amanda Higgins, Barbara Larson, Mary Mechler, Dianne Russell, Geni Williams, and Jon Wright.
* In 1995, a number of AUM students participated in a two-course sequence on book-publishing that led to an innovative history of Montgomery street names. This work, edited by two AUM faculty members, is entitled Who Was Dexter Avenue, Anyhow? Students researched local history and contributed to the writing, editing, and design of the book. Royalties from the project have been placed in a special fund to promote similar future endeavors. The students published in the book are Ashley Gordon, Nicky Kilmer, Stephanie Larkins, Cindy Mantione, Gwen S. Price, Judy Beaver Sims, and Carole K. Whitby.
* Jon Wright, a graduate student at AUM, was invited in 1996 to contribute an essay to the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Tudor England, a major project edited by leading Renaissance scholars and due to be published by Garland Press. Wright is one of the few graduate students invited to participate, and in fact his first contribution was so well received that he was invited to prepare a second.
* The hundred-year anniversary of the publication of Bram Stoker's famous novel, Dracula, led to a summer 1997 conference held in Los Angeles by the International Transylvania Society, the leading organization of scholars interested in vampire lore. Not only was AUM graduate student Claire Skowronski one of the few students invited to present a paper at the conference, but her satirical essay on vampires won first prize in the writing competition and will be published in a book issuing from the conference.
* Because of the significant scholarly and popular interest generated by the recent discovery of Martha Moulsworth's 1632 "Memorandum," one of the earliest autobiographical poems ever written by an English woman and also one of the earliest and most vigorous calls for educational equality ever issued in England, two AUM faculty members decided to establish an international essay competition. Students from throughout the world were invited to examine Moulsworth's poem from as many different perspectives as possible. The resulting book, "The Birthday of My Self": Martha Moulsworth, Renaissance Poet, was accepted for publication both as a monograph and as a special issue of Critical Matrix, the award-winning journal published by the Women's Studies Program at Princeton University. The book has been adopted for classroom use throughout the country, has been well reviewed, and has become the best-selling issue the journal has ever published. The volume includes work by students from such universities as Oxford, Duke, Virginia, Missouri, Nebraska, Louisiana State, and many others, and it also includes work of varying length (from full essays to brief comments) by the following students from AUM: Kevin Bowden, Regina Clark, Chantinell Cooper, Randall Cobb, Mike Crocker, Joe Csicsila, Rebecca Cundiffe, James Diggs, Brad Burt Doleys, Emily Cobern, Ashley Gordon, Lisa Hambrick, Elizabeth Jackson, Allison Law, Charlyn Liddell, Kevin McGowin, Lisa Pappas, Linda Pegram, Karen Pirnie, Neil Probst, Jerry Sailors, Sharon Sarmiento, Melissa Simms, Judy Sims, Hubble Sowards, Nejla Stokes, Denise D. Sutterfield, Kathy Tucker, Jon Wright, and Carolyn Young. A state-wide series of lectures on Moulsworth's poem, sponsored by the Alabama Humanities Foundation, generated more than $1500 to support student research, and subsequent profits from sales of the "The Birthday of My Self" have been donated to the AUM English Scholarship Fund.
* Frank O'Connor was one of the leading short story writers of the twentieth century, and in fact his powerful work entitled "Guests of the Nation" is widely considered one of the best short stories ever written. 1998 saw the publication of Frank O'Connor: New Perspectives, a major collection of essays by noted scholars dealing with O'Connor's writings. The book, more than four hundred pages long, includes many contributions from students at AUM, including Curtis Bowden, John Burdett, Kathleen B. Durrer, Tasheka Gipson, Ashley Gordon, Scott Johnson, Katie Magaw, Karey Oakley, Lane Powell, Michael Probst, Denean Rivera, Dianne Russell, Claire Skowronski, Gwen Warde, Claudia Wilsch, Jon Wright, and Carolyn T. Young. Briefer contributions by the following students are also included: Kelley J. Beyer, Clint Darby, Jeremiah Deneve, Heather Edwards, Earl Eidem, Jennifer Henderson, Cheri Norwood, Douglas Scarborough, Angela Soule, Kalicia Spigner, and Clint Van Der Pool, Jr.
* Future publishing projects involving AUM students will probably include a book on Kate Chopin, the nineteenth-century American writer; an encyclopedia focusing on Ben Jonson, the major Renaissance author; a critical survey of significant English and American poetry; a guide to the typical thematic and stylistic traits of major English-language authors; and various smaller or more focused efforts.
Students of English at AUM have presented papers at
REGIONAL, NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARLY CONFERENCES
Scholarly conferences have always offered excellent opportunities for researchers to present the results of their studies to the colleagues most capable of assessing their work's merit and significance. Speaking before a room full of experts (who can publicly ask questions, raise doubts, and issue challenges) can often be an intimidating--if invigorating--experience. This is one reason that we are so proud of the AUM students who have accepted this challenge by presenting papers at scholarly conferences throughout the U.S. and even abroad. Often these students have appeared on the same panels with seasoned Ph.D's, and the fact that so many of them have been undergraduates is especially remarkable. Among the students who have risen to this difficult demand by having papers accepted for presentation have been the following:
* Amy Blair, who presented a paper on representations of Renaissance women at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Toronto in 1994
* Lynn Bryan, who contributed to a paper on a Latin treatise on history presented at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Atlanta in 1997
* Regina Clark, Randall Cobb, Rebecca Cundiffe, Gary Goodson, Lisa Hambrick, Neil Probst, Jerry Sailors, and Kathy Tucker, who received very positive reaction to a panel presentation on short fiction they offered at a 1995 conference in Huntsville
* Kevin Bowden, Phil Festoso, Kurt Niland, and Karen Pirnie, who presented papers on a Renaissance woman writer at a conference at Florida State University in 1994 > Joe Csicsila, Gary Goodson, Kurt Niland, and Dan Seidel, who presented papers on short fiction at the 1995 meeting of the American Culture Association in Nashville
* Joe Csicsila, who, during his time at AUM, presented four conference papers and who has subsequently presented at least another eight. Joe's papers, many of them growing out of his work in English classes at AUM, have been given at conferences of such groups as the American Literature Association, the Modern Language Association, the Center for Mark Twain Studies, the Rocky Mountain Modem Language Association, the Southern Writers/Writing Association, the Mississippi Philological Society, the Fitzgerald Historical Society, and the UNLV Graduate Student Association.
* Kurt Niland and Karen Pirnie, who presented papers at a 1995 seminar on women writers at the University of Alabama in Birmingham
* Kurt Niland, who co-wrote and co-presented a paper read at the 1995 meeting of the Rocky Mountain Mediaeval and Renaissance Conference in Flagstaff, Arizona.
* Karen Pell,an award-winning country music songwriter and performer who spoke at a 1997 conference in Nashville (to mention only her most recent forum).
* Julie Sellers and Joanna Walker, who presented papers on business writing at a 1995 conference in Nashville
* Claire Skowronski, whose satirical paper on vampires was not only accepted for presentation at a 1997 conference celebrating the centennial publication of Dracula but also won first prize in the essay competition and will be published in the conference proceedings
Students of English at AUM have won regional, national,
and international PRIZES AND A WARDS
External prizes are especially significant indications of the quality of a student's work, since the outside evaluators have no personal knowledge of the student and can thus be especially objective. We are therefore proud of the students who have won recognition of this kind from such organizations as the following:
* The Alabama College English Teachers Association Each year, ACETA awards a prize to the best essay submitted by an undergraduate student at a college in the state. In 1994 the award was won by AUM's Chris Hansen.
* The F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Essay Contest The Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery holds an annual essay competition open to students at regional colleges. Students from AUM have consistently excelled in this contest. Winners have included the following students: Heather Edwards, Amanda Higgins, Judith Meyer, Susan Reeves, and Judy Sims.
* The Southern Literary Festival Held annually at campuses throughout the South, the Festival receives numerous submissions for its contests in creative and scholarly writing. Winners at recent festivals have included AUM students Lara Bridger, Shana Coley, Leeann Faulk, Wade Greenfield, Ondrea Longuet, and Beverly Moore.
Students of English at AUM are encouraged by much
ON-CAMPUS RECOGNITION
The Department makes many efforts to celebrate, on campus, the best achievements of our students, especially in research and creative writing. Each spring we host a festive Honors Luncheon to recognize student accomplishments, including winners of the following distinctions:
* The Chancellor's Scholar Award Each year AUM gives special recognition to student who has the best record of academic achievement in its component schools. In 1997 the award for the School of Liberal Arts was won by English major Amanda Higgins.
* The Departmental Outstanding Student Award Faculty members in the department vote annually to select the student who has compiled the best record of achievement. Winners of this award have included Jeff Andrews, Rhonda Boswell, Roberta Burgess, Pam Carlson, Joseph Fisher, Gary Goodson, Ann Hatch, Tammy Hearn, Elizabeth Heflin, Amanda Higgins, Katie Magaw, Kurt Niland, Joy Patterson, Alaina Pierce, and Joanna Walker.
* Publication in COLLEHCTIONS For almost a decade the department has been holding annual essay contests open to students in English classes at all levels. Winners in the various categories are published in CollEHctions, which takes its distinctive name from the "EH" designation for campus English courses. Over the years, the following students have had their scholarly or creative work published in this forum: Susan B. Andrews, Bebe Barefoot, Laura Borgmann, Curtis Bowden, Lara Bridger, Bruce Brooks, David R. Brown, Cynthia V. Clements, Randall Cobb, Shana Coley, Eyal Ben David, Leann Faulk, Joseph Fisher, Donna Thomas Glisson, Gary Goodson, Michael J. Goldman, Ashley Gordon, Elizabeth Griff th, Phyllis Hedrick Amanda Higgins, Lynne Irwin, Jerzy Jurus, Amy Katz, Jean Kerr, Daphne Key, Julie J. Kiser, Mike Lamar, Jill LeQuatte, Kristen McQueen, Judith Meyer, Beverly Moore, Paul Morgan, Kurt Niland, Linda Pegram, Mary R. Prin, Marc Redus, Claire Skowronski, Joshua Shows, Betty Wade, John White, and Linda L. Williams.
Students of English at AUM have published
significant works of CREATIVE WRITING
The English Department at AUM not only has a strong tradition of promoting research and scholarly publication by students but also has a worthy record of encouraging important creative writing. Students who have excelled in this respect include the following:
* Lara Bridger, a poet whose work has been published in such journals as Amaryllis, and who was recently accepted into the MFA program at the University of Florida
* Earl Fisher, a novelist with one book (The Manhunter) already in print and more on the way
* Kevin McGowin, a poet, dramatist, and short story writer whose work has been published in innumerable national and international journals and whose first book of poems has recently been accepted for publication by Louisiana State University Press. Kevin has been an award-winning student and teacher in the creative writing program at the University of Florida, where he is currently finishing his Ph.D.
* Lisa Pappas, whose poetry has been published in a number of periodicals, including Amaryllis.
* Karren Pell, an award-winning song-writer and performer whose adaptation of Lee Smith's novel Fair and Tender Ladies will be presented in 1998 by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.
Students of English at AUM have chances to develop practical,
on-the-job research skills through the department's
INTERNSHIP PROGRAM
Participants in the internship program, which gives students work experience at various local companies, have been involved in a wide array of projects, including editing books, producing company manuals, and generating and editing many other professional documents. Nearly every participant in the program has either been offered a job as a result of the experience or has been able to use the experience to gain a job with another company. Participants in the program have included the following students: Roger Burdette, Rebecca Cundiffe, Wade Greenf eld, Linda Pegram, Julie Sellers, Michelle Wiesman, and Joanna Walker.
